Yesterday's intermittent heavy rain events made our little Riley somewhat miserable; no sun to warm his tender little body, and that's a difficult circumstance for a sun-loving toy poodle.  There was enough of a window later in the afternoon permitting us to wear rain jackets and get out for our ravine ramble, a little later in the day than is usual for us on a Saturday.

The woodland squirrels presented themselves, as frisky as ever, for their daily dole of peanuts.  At one juncture we came across Max out for his daily power walk, ski poles in hand, dressed as always in his white open-neck dress shirt and Tilley hat.

And then there was Gail, a neighbour of over two decades, though she lives at the foot of the street and we at the mid-mark where the street does a fold-over turn.  From seeing her almost daily as a young mother of two pre-teens, when she had her two golden retrievers, we hardly ever see her anymore.  But there was a dog with her; with her sister who accompanied her, actually, who owns the dog a large poodle-retriever mix determined to see that those pesky squirrels didn't bother her mistress.

Whether it's the effect of no longer daily exercising her body through a pet-required regimen of regular ravine walks, Gail, a tiny red-headed women who stands shorter than my 5', is now almost perfectly rotund, her face a pleasant-looking little balloon of regular features that once sat within a petite face atop a petite and perfectly-proportioned body.

And I wonder what Gail thinks when she sees us, after having queried at the absence of our miniature black poodle, Button...does she perchance muse to herself how old we have grown in that time between our first acquaintanceship and the present?